Moamer Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam and his spymaster Abdullah Senussi were on Monday both behind bars as Libya’s new leaders moved to bring the former regime’s two most wanted men to justice. The National Transitional Council, Libya’s interim authority, insists that Seif, arrested on Saturday in the country’s far-flung Saharan south, be brought to trial in Libya where he could face the death penalty. NTC officials have yet to indicate their intentions regarding Senussi but are likely also to want to see him tried at home rather than at the International Criminal Court in The Hague where both he and Seif faces charges of crimes against humanity. World powers, fearful that Seif would not be given a fair trial after his father was felled by a bullet to the head after being captured on October 20, are urging Libya to work with the ICC. “The decision is that he will be tried by Libyan courts. It is a question of national sovereignty,” NTC vice chairman and official spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga told reporters in Tripoli late on Sunday. Interim justice minister Mohammed al-Allagui told AFP Gaddafi’s son would be tried in Libya “because local justice is the rule and international justice is the exception”. “We have the necessary guarantees for a fair trial, especially after the amendment of a law that guarantees the independence of the judiciary as regards the executive,” he said. ICC spokesman Fadi Al-Abdallah told AFP that the Libyan authorities were obliged to cooperate with the ICC and surrender Seif to the court as required by the UN resolution on Libya. Abdallah said on Sunday that the ICC had not yet been officially notified of Libya’s position on the issue nor of the arrest of Senussi. “If the Libyan authorities want to hold the trial in Libya, they must submit a request to the ICC and the judges will decide,” he said. “According to the principle of complementarity and the Statue of Rome, the priority rests with national law.”
